As many people have wished me happy birthday this week, they have included something along the lines of: “Make someone else bake for you today!” Of course Marissa and Amanda took care of me last weekend with the peanut butter cupcakes, and my friends and family here in CT didn’t drop the ball on the big day either. Friends from school surprised me with a Coldstone ice cream cake the night before and my parents ordered a decadent chocolate mousse cake from the restaurant we ate at on my birthday. So when Ryan told my parents he had also made a cake for my birthday night, we were suddenly in cake overload. No complaints over here, but I have to keep in mind that spring break is in a few weeks and my bikinis will soon be out to haunt me.

And when I say Ryan made a cake, I mean he baked the cake from a mix and I decorated it. It’s my fault, I just couldn’t resist intervening. The end result was really adorable though, and I had a fun time decorating — it’s my birthday, I can do what I want!

For Christmas, Ryan had bought me the “Great Cupcake Pan” from Williams-Sonoma that I’ve been eyeing forever, but just didn’t have a big occasion to use it for until now. In its naked chocolate form, the “frosting” swirl might look more like something a dog left behind, but that’s nothing a little (read: A LOT) of cream cheese whipped cream frosting can’t fix!

When Ryan and I were brainstorming flavors, I had first thought of doing some sort of peanut butter/chocolate combination because that’s one of my faves, but Amanda and Marissa took care of that last weekend so we decided to go for another favorite flavor combination of mine: Coookies ‘n Cream. We used devil’s food cake mix and added some crushed up oreos, filled the layers with a cookies and cream frosting, and topped with a cream cheese flavored whipped cream frosting. I would have covered the whole thing with the cookies ‘n cream frosting, but because the cake was so rich, I opted for the lighter, more fluffy whipped cream frosting. And for oversized sprinkles for this oversized cupcake, we appropriately used mini Oreos:

I made the cherry on top by sticking 2 red candy melts together and the green stem is actually the cream filling of a mint oreo rolled into a thin log — I just looked around my pantry for something green and got creative. The top of the cake was kind of tricky to frost because of the shape, but I just used a piping bag cut with a really wide tip and created my own swirly pattern. Kind of messy, but still freakin cute if you ask me:

Giant Cookies ‘n Cream Cupcake

For the cake:1 box Devil’s Food Cake Mix1 row (~13) regular oreos

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees- Prepare cake according to package’s instructions- Crush up (not too finely) the oreos and mix them into the batter- Divide batter between the 2 parts of the giant cupcake pan and bake for about an hour (Ryan started by setting the timer for 40 minutes, but because of the nature of the pan, kept having to add time — so be watchful!)

- Beat cream cheese, sugar, salt, and vanilla together in a large bowl until smooth- Using an electric mixer, whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form- Gently fold the cream cheese mixture into the whipped cream until well combined